So what did YOU do today?

Brendanan wrote:oh god... sorry arrow! i suppose you deserve the credit for your work :p


I'm not sure about the bars, but i have been thinking of making the lava go out like what you did...

I know we had one like that originally, and i removed it (before we started on the eating hall), but it could do well for us now

I don't really dig the iron bars either. Could we leave it open? Both glass and iron bars skew my view of the epic lava falls and lake below.

jeffewing997 wrote:
I don't really dig the iron bars either. Could we leave it open? Both glass and iron bars skew my view of the epic lava falls and lake below.

Maybe glass panes rather than blocks? Completely leaving it open might be too much of a levitation-like effect.

Today I helped a little as Splated finished the Double Grinder. The skeleton half works great, although when really full, they have a tendency to partially glitch out of the drop tube and push you around, making it hard to aim the splash potion. The old grinder has a narrow corridor to stand in, which minimizes the distance they can push you.

The spider half has bigger problems. The killing zone at the bottom is too big, I think, and too many spiders survive getting even a double-strength splash potion of harm thrown into the chamber. Three such potions failed to clear out the first batch I dropped down. It COULD work as a potion-less grinder using swords or a bow (heck knows the skeleton half of the grinder will provide plenty of arrows), but the spot you'd stand in to use the chamber is too far from the actual spider spawner to just stand there and kill spiders as they fall.

Speaking of grinders and potions, although I've been trying to build up bigger batches lately to economize on splash potions, we're running out of gunpowder to make more splash potions with. Anyone have any suggestions as to where we could put a nice darkroom-and-pit item grinder? Ideally it would have a collection point people visit frequently, a 25-block or taller drop shaft, and then a large horizontal darkroom to spawn mobs in at the top of the shaft. Perhaps we could put the collection point across the hall from the hub station, near main storage, with the dark room above the roof of the throne room. Or is the ocean floor above too near the peak of the roof?

Anyways, I used the XP gained from my session testing out the new double grinder to have another go at enchanting a diamond pick. Got yet another Efficiency IV/Unbreaking III pick. Sigh. After that, I went splelunking a bit in the abandoned mineshaft off the tree farm, and mining a bit in the old bedrock mines. Found a little gold and iron, a crapload of redstone, and 8 diamonds (from only 2 ore, not bad use of a fortune pick).

I'd say for a dark room we can go near the farms somewhere. I'm sure you could find room without disrupting much.

Try not to worry TOO much about getting that pick. Just sit afk when needed, not when you can do other things. And using bows is not a bad idea, if the skeles work well

Brendanan wrote:I'd say for a dark room we can go near the farms somewhere. I'm sure you could find room without disrupting much.

Actually, the farms probably is not a great place. There are two floors with eye-levels at 40 and 48. That's far too high to put the collection area at the bottom of a pit. Even with a much more vertically compact drowning-pool setup, There's no room for a serious darkroom above it without risking broaching the surface, especially if there's water up there somewhere, and I'm pretty sure there is. Below it, there wouldn't be enough room for a long enough drop, even if the tunnel from the Dining Hall to the Atrium wasn't in the way. At one end of the farms is the Great Dome, and at the other end, the Great Atrium. On the Entrance side of the farms is Shepherd's Ravine, which would make constructing a darkroom grinder difficult and annoying but not impossible. On the Throne Room side is a large abandoned Mineshaft...which we might be able to dig a darkroom above without too much trouble.

But past experience tells me that a big concern is putting the collection area someplace people visit frequently anyways. That's where mobs die and their drops end up, and someone needs to go pick them up, or they just despawn after five minutes and go to waste. Sitting there AFK is not really a great idea when using a pit-drop killing mechanism, as falling skeletons can shoot you as they drop, and either you're gonna be too far out from directly underneath to automatically pick up their drops, or you'll get bitten by spiders and zombies as they go splat.

Places people visit frequently include the Hub train station, main storage, and the farms. I'll toss in the Double Grinder, but that's too close to being under the Great Dome for there to be much room above it for yet another vertical shaft, let alone a large darkroom spawning area. The farms are, as I mentioned above, too high in elevation to have the collection area handy to the parts of the farms people regularly visit. A small room near the Hub Station and Main Storage seems like the best bet. It's deep, far enough from the Great Dome and Atrium to not interfere with them spatially, frequently visited already, and convenient for putting drops in storage. The area's honeycombed with caves, which is a problem, and some of those caves are open to the sea above, which is a bigger problem, but not an insurmountable one.

The mines are another possibility, they're deep enough and there's nothing much in the way of our structures directly above them. Mine a branch out, mine a branch back, and when you go to dump your cobble and ores in the temp loot chest, you pick up whatever mob drops are sitting at the bottom of the pit. But the mines don't seem to be the focus of our city in quite the way I expected when we began this project.

Brendanan wrote:
Try not to worry TOO much about getting that pick. Just sit afk when needed, not when you can do other things. And using bows is not a bad idea, if the skeles work well

I've dropped off an unenchanted bow or two in a chest nearby. Why waste durability of an enchanted bow when it doesn't take much to kill a spider who's already been dropped from a great height?

And I only go AFK in the grinder when I wouldn't be actively doing anything else anyways. I like to go afk in the grinder when I'm reading my other websites or watching videos.

In What I Did Today news, I also lowered the current setback in the Atrium another two blocks, splelunked a bit in the cave system nearby, and partially floored the tunnel from the atrium to the dining hall. I completed the cobble/slab frames for the stone-brick-stairs central swastikas, as far as the atrium work room. I also carved a little shortcut tunnel from the tree farm to the atrium dig, but once the setbacks are much lower, that may need to be sealed back up.

Hmmm.... Then my vote is try fit it in around the store room area. Sorry, on my phone, so posts are short

Brendanan wrote:I'd say for a dark room we can go near the farms somewhere. I'm sure you could find room without disrupting much.

Try not to worry TOO much about getting that pick. Just sit afk when needed, not when you can do other things. And using bows is not a bad idea, if the skeles work well

I think a dark room with a button to Drop the collected mobs to a splat floor and dump the collected loot into the store room sounds like the best option. theres also lava blades but you lose some loot. I remember there was a problem with mobs not falling off ledges any more. I'll look up what I can find and try some tests in creative see how the new mob ai works.

if build under an ocean they can't spawn on the surface.





From what I remember of mob farms, you need to have it 25 blocks away from players to spawn, try to remove all dark spots within 125 blocks in each direction. keep the hight under 2 block to avoid enderman, to stop spiders you need no 2 by 2 spots they can spawn in.

Splated wrote:I think a dark room with a button to Drop the collected mobs to a splat floor and dump the collected loot into the store room sounds like the best option. theres also lava blades but you lose some loot.

No need for a button, just let them fall. Unlike spawners, darkrooms are subject to the normal mob limit, so there's little profit in trying to build them up to all drop at once.

Splated wrote:I remember there was a problem with mobs not falling off ledges any more. I'll look up what I can find and try some tests in creative see how the new mob ai works.

If I remember correctly, if more than 45 blocks away from all players, they don't wander around. Perhaps to reduce lag, they just sit where they spawned and wait. Building the darkroom directly over someplace like the warehouse where people will be anyways will help with that a bit, but it might be a problem. But I don't think that new AI is implemented yet in the version we're playing with, I think that's just in the snapshots so far.

Splated wrote:if build under an ocean they can't spawn on the surface.
From what I remember of mob farms, you need to have it 25 blocks away from players to spawn, try to remove all dark spots within 125 blocks in each direction. keep the hight under 2 block to avoid enderman, to stop spiders you need no 2 by 2 spots they can spawn in.

I have two designs for darkrooms that I've used in the past. One keeps the height to 2 and uses signs to keep the water flowing, albeit with minor interruptions at each set of signs. Keep the water canals 2 wide, and spiders will indeed fall in and get washed to the pit eventually. Just keep the actual pit wider than 2x2 and they have a hard time sticking to the side.

The other design has a higher ceiling, but deals with Endermen by making sure there's nothing in the room they can pick up. Endermen can't pick up stone or cobble any more, so make sure the walls are all rock, and any Endermen who DO spawn just stand around looking dumb until they despawn 5 minutes later. The reason the ceiling is higher in this design is that the canals are signless, they are continuous flows of water to move mobs faster down to the falling pit. This necessitates a lot of changes in elevation to renew the water flows by going down a block. Changes in height of the canals mean changes in height of the spawning platforms above, as mobs even with the old AI are often reluctant to jump off of cliffs higher than 2-3 blocks high. Keep it to 2-3 blocks of a fall into water, however, and mobs don't hesitate to leap down off the spawning pads and into the canals. Spiders also get ground quite well by this design.

I used the first design on an old single-player game with great success. It was coupled with a spider dungeon, feeding into the same drop pit. The second design I used on my previous SMP server. I eventually had two darkrooms, mirror images of each other, feeding into the same drop pit, and was considering adding a third. That design utilized a skylight-shaft next to the ladder tube down to my bedrock mines. Since we'd be using a purpose-dug shaft for this one, we could concieveably put four darkrooms, one on each side of a 4x4 shaft. With the flowing water pushing spiders out away from the near wall, they shouldn't be able to climb the walls at all once they fall into the pit.

Found this gem. Seems to be much faster than a minecart rail

Dr. Steel wrote:Found this gem. Seems to be much faster than a minecart rail

Also seems glitchy over long distances, resource-intensive, and difficult to turn or switch tracks.

I'm worried about the resources. When for 6 iron and 6 gold, you get 22 blocks of relatively quick travel in an easy to use system

Brendanan wrote:I'm worried about the resources. When for 6 iron and 6 gold, you get 22 blocks of relatively quick travel in an easy to use system

If you can limit yourself to passengers only, you can go almost 40 iron rails for every powered one, with almost no loss of speed. Even at a conservative 32-to-1 ratio to allow for some slight changes in altitude, 6 gold (for 6 power rails) can handle 72 iron worth of rails, 12 batches of 6 iron, making 16 rails each batch, for a total of 192 iron and 6 gold rails. That's almost 200 blocks traveled at 8m/s.

That boat/piston system uses 4 iron to travel 5 blocks. Okay, it does not need gold, but to go the same ~200 blocks of travel, you'd spend ~160 iron, not 72. Plus a crapload of wood and redstone. And you can't pick a boat back up once you put it down.

That and dwarves are known for their minecarts

Cool seems like the boat shoul break .

As for today I majorly decorated the dual grind room all most finished.

Now i've watched the vid, it looks cool, but that kind of thing is extremely glitchy in SMP...

What did i do today?

I got up at 4am for work... got home at midday, and straight to mc :p

I looked around at everything done properly...

I made modifications to the tunnel to the pit. Please dont extend the decoration along the tunnel too far! the position of the last section isnt final.

I fixed the stairs down the lavafalls. I moved a billion items, and i smelted 4 lots of cobble (all 6 furnaces in all 5 lots of furnaces). We now have over a chest of smoothstone.

Speaking of smoothstone... I'm not allowed to touch the stuff! my right click button is screwing up, and i will almost always placec two blocks for every click. So any block like smoothstone i do not touch.

I did a tiny bit on the floor of the throne room, and did little bits n pieces everywhere.

Also, SW (i'm assuming it was you), that section for the "atrium viewing lounge", we may have that, but it may not be final yet... Remember we need to have a spot for all the housing first... then we can fit other stuff in (like the tunnel to it)

Oh, i also spent a lot of time lost in the ladders around the pit trying to find the way in... i ended up going back to the eating hall to get in. Dont worry, i know my way around a little better now...

Brendanan wrote:Speaking of smoothstone... I'm not allowed to touch the stuff! my right click button is screwing up, and i will almost always placec two blocks for every click. So any block like smoothstone i do not touch.

You and me both. Smoothstone is not a huge problem, but glass is a major annoyance. I don't think it's anything wrong with our right-click buttons, lots of people have this problem with MC in general.

Brendanan wrote:Also, SW (i'm assuming it was you), that section for the "atrium viewing lounge", we may have that, but it may not be final yet... Remember we need to have a spot for all the housing first... then we can fit other stuff in (like the tunnel to it)

Definitely. I just had realized that there was this natural cave space behind the tree farm that must be close to the wall of the atrium, and I wanted to dig to find exactly where that wall was in relation to the tree farm, so it didn't surprise us later. Since that was, at the time, the current level which the setbacks had been dug down to, I was able to dig out a test section of glassed-in wall to see how that would look, as a possible alternative to actual balconies for the living quarters later. Also, to see what sort of space a quarter-section of the atrium wall would produce, to give us an idea what sort of size the living quarters will be. Eventually, that area will either get the glass removed and the wall replaced with smoothstone again, or have a small viewing gallery of some sort. I was even toying with the idea of making a much larger window with a new small tree farm for birch trees set into the wall of the atrium. But before then, I was thinking of having that area be available as a sort of Sample Apartment area, for people to try out ideas for living quarters layouts to be used lower down.

Speaking of which, we're getting into the areas planned for living quarters. We should probably start talking about layouts and such.

Brendanan wrote:Oh, i also spent a lot of time lost in the ladders around the pit trying to find the way in... i ended up going back to the eating hall to get in. Dont worry, i know my way around a little better now...

Sorry about that. The original access ladder turned out to be too close to the center of the pit, and the setbacks ran into it, so I had to delete the bottom half of the ladder. Now it only goes as far down as the observation area at the top of the skeleton grinder's water ladder. There's a new access ladder, accessible either from the back of the bottom level of the tree farm, or from the work area at the end of the tunnel from the dining hall. There's also the short access ladder directly from the work area, but that doesn't go to the setback-excavation walkway yet.

An MC problem you say? Any known fix? Options in optifine? Anything? This is a serious problem!

Brendanan wrote:An MC problem you say? Any known fix? Options in optifine? Anything? This is a serious problem!

Not that I've heard of. It's been plagueing me from the beginning, through two different computers and three different trackballs, so no, I don't think it's a problem with the physical equipment.

Another session of XP grinding, another attempt at a diamond pick. Efficiency IV and Fortune III for 47 XP levels. Not useless, but let's keep this one as a spare.

Sorry for the double post. Didn't want this one to be missed.

This morning I spent some time digging a path from the second floor of the farms towards the spot where I wanted the top of the pit drop for a new item grinder to be, over the spot I picked out behind that "crawlspace access" door across from the hub station. Everything went fine, I managed to thread the needle between the pig and chicken pens with the tunnel, missed the dome so I didn't break into it by mistake, and managed to not break into any caves en route.

And then I dig out horizontally into the side of a deep, deep ocean inlet. It's not a very large bay, surface-area-wise, but it's deep enough that the seabed bottom is level with the floor of the second floor of the farm. That's almost 20 meters deep. And part of that seabed is sand, dunno how deep that goes, but it's gonna be a problem to dig under that without it caving in on us and flooding the project. And this bay is smack-dab over where i wanted to dig the darkroom for the new item grinder. Aaaargh.



As you can see, I've done some swimming down and placed a bunch of jackolanterns to light up the seabed. There's a door embedded in the end of the hallway in from the farms if anyone wants to go swimming and check it out.

Maybe we can run a darkroom off the side of the Atrium, with a glass-walled canal bringing the mobs over to be dumped into the center of the atrium? Or something?

I think I can make a solution to the sea bed thing... Mark out where you want the room to be, and I'll make it work...

Brendanan wrote:I think I can make a solution to the sea bed thing... Mark out where you want the room to be, and I'll make it work...

Splated brought down a crapload of gravel and started filling in the bay. I think it'll work.

Or that :p empty all our chests... Ad who said it was useless?

I got the grinder and the delivery to the store room made just drop in mobs and we have free loot.

i even tested it with a few stray wandering creepers ad zombies.

Awesome

This evening i spent almost entirely working on the bay-filling project. By night, I tried to hunt mobs and/or lure them into the pit trap, focusing on creepers due to our dire need of gunpowder. By day, I alternated between dropping more gravel off the edge of the platform, and going down to the bottom of the inside of the platform and digging out the inner layers of gravel from the drained areas of the bay, using torches so the gravel could be re-used later. I also hunted slimes in the throne room when I went down to drop gunpowder and other loot in the warehouse. I only died a couple of times, the most frustrating being when one creeper killed me...then another got me when I went to pick up my stuff. The jerk blew up my dropped diamond sword and clock. I have yet to replace either. I did take a break to go through one drop cycle in the double grinder, to enchant a new Power II bow for myself when the old one got too close to breaking. For some reason, spiders killed by potion don't seem to be dropping XP the way skeletons and so forth do.

Scuttlebutt on the wiki and official forums seems to indicate that 1.2 comes out tomorrow. I'll be out of internet contact all day due to a relative's funeral, sadly.